The first Mensa convention, I went to, what with all the finest minds gathered, nobody had remembered to buy the milk for the coffee... :-)

And yes, Mensa even has Clam diggers and housewives!

I find internet communities useful.

Usage of the terms Trolling & Flames started off in the usenet newsgroups, about 2 decades ago.

No offence intended kitchenpiper but,
If you are doing formal study "for a masters, this module I am studying online communities and online learning" I am appalled - unless that sort of basic material has yet not been covered, but it is so basic that it should have been supplied within the first week or two - at the standards of the Instution initiating your study process...

Also, I am rather bemused that one is allowed to do a Masters level in an area of technical expertise with no relevant previous background... no wonder we had the rather volatile thread here about Academics recently, and no wonder some people were rather excited...

Many years ago, I once received a phone call from someone who had been given my name as some sort of "expert". He was doing a first year Uni subject on comparing the uses, pros & cons, etc of several computing languages. Now the students had not used (written code in!) most of those languages, and for some of them included in the assignment, that Uni did not even have the ability to run the code such as things like Smalltalk , which at the time was a rather esoteric language... I had the reputation of being able to read and make sense of code for over 30 prog languages at the time (I called that interest part of my 'hobby'), and I was very ready to admit that I had not had access to run code for some of them... most of my "knowledge" was gained by reading reference texts, the existence of which had not even been given to the students as "background material"...

Sorry, I'll get orf me soapbox nnnnow...

Robin